Sunflower

Chapter One: The Assassin

The assassin's arrow struck the young queen with a hard "thunk", forcing a single pained gasp out of her before she fell dead on the cobblestones. When her body fell, we, her Sisters, surrounded her. We all wore the same opulent garments with one singular difference hidden beneath long belled sleeves and heavy cloaks. The small crossbows strapped to our forearms that were revealed only when we raised our right hands towards the direction the arrow had come.

The assassin's shadowy form ran across the roof of the building to our left as the true queen, Demetria, snarled the order to fire. As one, we let our bolts fly. They sang through the air with a high-pitched whistle, the sound carrying even over the throng of screaming onlookers that had been awaiting our queen's speech.

The bolts struck the assassin, but he continued running, unbothered and dove over the far side of the building and out of our sights.

"It's one of the Deathless. Find him." The queen ordered one of the other Sisters, Daffodil. She nodded and ripped off her dress in one swift tug, revealing the leather armor we all wore beneath our finery. She charged after the assassin with the numerous soldiers following in her wake. The queen then turned her head towards me. Her eyes were stern, her mouth pressed into a harsh scowl. "Move her." She said, gesturing to the dead woman at our feet before continuing her rout to the pedestal to give her speech. She stepped over the fallen Sister without care of the blood that stained her trailing skirt. The other Sisters, their faces pallid and pinched with unspoken horror, followed her, taking care to put themselves between her and any more arrows.

I would have stayed behind to see to our fallen Sister even if I had not received the order. I had done so many times before. So many times, in fact, I might as well have been named the royal coroner. "Oh, Primrose, you poor thing," I sighed, swallowing against an ache building in my throat. "At least it was quick." The last Sister I'd buried had been nothing more than charcoal by the time we'd managed to put the fire out. I carefully removed the heavy dress and cloak and lifted her up in my arms. I had been trained since I was twelve to protect the queen, so I was stronger than I appeared, but Primrose was always a tiny thing. She was the youngest and newest of us and as I carried her away back to the palace, I was reminded that I was in fact carrying the corpse of a child. She was only sixteen and had already given her life for her queen just as I would too someday.

It was late in the evening before the others began to trickle back into our barracks. They'd all stripped out of their dresses and came home in their uniforms. Not for ease of movement or the heat of the day. I suspected they simply wanted to rid themselves of the bloodstains that surely must have covered their outer garments.

"Have you buried her already?" Dahlia asked, perching herself on the edge of her bunk as Hyacinth stood at the barracks one window, staring blankly out of it. She kept rubbing absently at her cheek, as if she could still feel the blood splatter there.

I nodded as I watched the door for the missing member of our little family. "She'd bitch otherwise. Where's Daffodil?" Dahlia shrugged. Hyacinth said nothing. If any of us thought we might have to bury another Sister within the span of a day, none of us dared to voice it.

After a while, we just forced ourselves to eat whatever we could stomach, washed, and changed into our nightclothes and went to bed. We all laid in our bunks awake, painfully aware of the empty one over my own. It still had Primrose's old stuffed dog sitting on it. The bedraggled stained thing was made of old grain sacks, something her mother made for her before she was brought to the palace. I bit the inside of my cheek, hating that I had not thought to put it in the grave with her.

A whistle made us all lift our heads. Daffodil stood in the doorway, leaning her shoulder against the frame. "Get up." She said, looking even more like that bitch Demetria with that thin-lipped scowl, though she looked more worried than pissed at the world. "The Queen wants to meet with us immediately."